


A Dalish Hunter Fears Nothing

by deathwailart



Series: Damhnait Mahariel [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1614026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Except perhaps spiders.  Not the big ones but the little ones that seek refuge from the rain in aravels.  (Or Tamlen gets dragged out of bed by Mahariel to gather up spiders.)</p>
<p>Written for the prompt: f!Mahariel/Tamlen: which one of them deals with the spiders</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dalish Hunter Fears Nothing

"Tamlen," Damhnait hisses as she carefully swings herself into the aravel he shares with Junar and Fenarel, "Tamlen!"  
  
"Lethallan?" Tamlen's voice is thick with sleep as he sits up, rubbing at his eyes, "lethallan it's late, come back in the morning."  
  
"Is that Damhnait?" Fenarel asks groggily, blinking around in the dark.  
  
"Go back to sleep Fen," Tamlen mutters, moving to do the same himself.  
  
"Everyone shut up," Junar complains as Damhnait frowns, rubbing her bare arms in the cold night air, shuffling her feet.  
  
"Tam!" She repeats more urgently, moving to kneel at the edge of his blankets. "Tam _please_."  
  
"Tamlen just _go_ or I'll throw you out!" Junar snaps and with a huff Tamlen complies, gathering his blankets around his shoulders like a cape as he follows Damhnait out of the aravel, letting the flaps fall shut behind him.  
  
"What Damhnait, it's late, we have an early start in the morning."  
  
"Spiders."  
  
Tamlen blinks at her slowly, as if assessing whether or not she's being truthful with him or deciding if he's awake enough to deal with this.  
  
"Spider?"  
  
"No, spider _s_ ," she insists, nodding over to the aravel she usually shares with Ashalle and Merrill only Merrill is doing some sort of thing with the Keeper that keeps her late and has her rising far earlier and Ashalle is with Maren, keeping watch over the pregnant halla so Maren gets some rest. If either of them had been present then she would have had them to help her with her spider problem but unfortunately for Tamlen, she doesn't.  
  
"Are they big ones?"  
  
She ignores his question and grabs him by the wrist, tugging him along to her aravel.  
  
"Lethallan, are they big ones? Do I need weapons? We have to-" he yawns, rubbing his eyes again as he stumbles in her wake, "have to warn the others, fend them off. Find the nest-"  
  
"No, they're..." She trails off as they come to a halt in front of her aravel where she nervously fidgets, embarrassment and shame making her go red. She's a Dalish hunter and here she is in the middle of the night dragging Tamlen out of bed to deal with the unwelcome discovery that woke her up.  
  
"They're normal spiders aren't they?"  
  
Damhnait's silence condemns her and Tamlen stops dead as though rooted to the ground. He folds his arms and sighs as Damhnait scuffs her bare toes against the ground.  
  
"Lethallin," she wheedles, standing on tiptoe so they're nose to nose and he sighs again even as he tucks her sleep rumpled hair behind her ears, still in waves from the braids she wore earlier in the day. "Please. I hate spiders, I don't want one to crawl into my mouth or worse, have one crawl into my ears and lay eggs!"  
  
"You've listened to far too many of Fenarel's stupid stories," he grumps but Damhnait pouts – oh she'd never call it a pout and she'd punch him hard enough in the arm that he'd have a bruise for a week if he said she did but Tamlen knows a pout when he sees one – and he feels his resolve melt like the snows in spring. " _Fine_ , I'll come help you get rid of the spiders. Even though a Dalish hunter-"  
  
"You've seen me kill big spiders, the ones that actually attack!"  
  
"And yet you won't kill the little ones."  
  
"I can't stab them or hit them with arrows."  
  
"You could trap them under a cup and get rid of them!"  
  
Damhnait mutters something very rude about him under her breath so he just follows her and ducks inside the aravel as she points out where they were found. From the looks of it he's sure they came in to avoid the recent rains, finding a nice corner that happens to be where Damhnait sleeps and he carefully starts to remove them, Damhnait watching him work with wide eyes as he deposits them far enough away from her in the bushes. Then, when she still looks at her bedding as though it will somehow transform into a wriggling mass of tiny spiders he shakes it out and goes through the clothes she's left lying out for the next morning; he even goes as far as carefully removing her arrows from her quiver before he gives it a good shake outside. Hopefully it's the last of the spiders because Damhnait has stepped back inside, reaching for a cloth to wipe her feet and he expects her to hand it to him but she kneels and carefully wipes his clean too and he has to look away. Friends sometimes do it for friends but they've been more than that for a while though they've never bothered to put any sort of name to whatever they happen to be. Besides, there's a reason his feet have been cleaned when he should really be heading back to the aravel he shares with Fenarel and Junar.  
  
"Ma serannas," she says gratefully, the cloth tossed into a corner for now, giving him a tug so he follows her to her bed, urging him to crawl in first. "I don't know what I'd do without you."  
  
"And I you. Though I'd wager I'd get more sleep and be thought of as less of a troublemaker," he replies but he's smiling so she knows he's not actually annoyed with her as she snorts and crawls in next to him, tugging the blankets up about their shoulders. They usually only do this when they're camping and it's been years since they actually slept in the same blankets together in an aravel now that they're no longer children though they're still referred to as such annoyingly. Damhnait smells like fresh pines and the earth after rain, her hair soft and ticklish when it brushes his cheek as she arranges herself comfortably next to him. Usually on patrols if they sleep together it means someone else is around and on watch so they can't exactly do anything. And it's usually so cold that even pressed as close as they can get their teeth will still chatter. Now he's in her bed, curled close and he's going to have to leave in the morning and he won't be ashamed, he'd never be ashamed, but they're both going to have to answer questions. "Damhnait," he whispers in the dark and she makes a sleepy noise, "are you-"  
  
"Ssh," she leans forward clumsily and kisses him, a brief brush of lips. "I want you to stay. If you want to."  
  
"Of course I want to stay."  
  
"Then shut up and go to sleep, we have work to do in the morning."  
  
He rolls his eyes and kisses the top of her head. "Fine, sleep well lethallan."  
  
"And you Tamlen. Vanquisher of spiders."  
  
He snorts and wraps an arm around her. It was worth being dragged out of bed to deal with spiders if she pulls him into hers afterwards but it's another thing on the list of things not to tell Damhnait if he ever wants to hear the end of it.


End file.
